


la belle fleur sauvage

by rohanclub



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Commander Erwin Smith, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/M, Female Reader, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Season 2 spoilers, nurse reader
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 06:53:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30101994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohanclub/pseuds/rohanclub
Summary: They announce themselves with the sound of hooves against cobblestone. Two horses, a Friesian and a Haflinger, lowering their heads as if to bear the shame of their riders. Cadets, limping along their sides on foot. Most of them keep their faces hidden, their capes pulled up over their heads. You know that it means they’re not coming home to anyone, and something pokes at the insides of your chest.The Survey Corps.
Relationships: Erwin Smith/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	la belle fleur sauvage

**Author's Note:**

> boom boom welcome to erwin smith brainrot pt 1! i've been wanting to write this specific fic ever since i watched s2 and i finally got off my flat ass and got it started lol. this is a simple prologue if you will, the remaining chapters are going to consist of more interaction and dialogue. ty for reading!

Erwin Smith has blood on his hands.

At first, it’s in whispers, escaping the lips of men perched up against crumbling brick walls, their fingers clenched around bottlenecks and their lungs breathing fire. There’s no condemnation to be found in their shallow words, the halfhearted disrespect almost inspiring ridicule instead. It’s not their children. It never is.

You see it for yourself two years after coming to know his name.

It’s hard to breathe, out in the street. It smells like sweat, the stench mingling with the one coming from the back alleys, foul and invasive. At high noon, everything’s broken glass and boney shoulders, knocking into each other with little apprehension. Blistering fingers trembling, hidden away beneath the linen of their skirt pockets. Eyes, dark and wide and wet, scanning up and down the road for a first glimpse of dark green.

Among the turmoil, you tug your hood tighter around your neck. The thick fabric smothers your skin, heat climbing past your collar underneath the sweltering sun. You can feel people’s elbows piercing your ribs when you use your free hand to push through the crowd, careful not to step on anyone’s toes, a girl’s wrist almost striking your face as she reaches for her mother’s arms. Perhaps, if you could get close enough to the front, maybe find an opening somewhere, perhaps then you could—

“They’re coming!”

All of a sudden, the street goes quiet. The people next to you stop moving, craning their sweaty necks past each others backs, breathing laboured. For the first time, you think the silence might be worse than the chaos.

They announce themselves with the sound of hooves against cobblestone. Two horses, a Friesian and a Haflinger, lowering their heads as if to bear the shame of their riders. Cadets, limping along their sides on foot. Most of them keep their faces hidden, their capes pulled up over their heads. You know that it means they’re not coming home to anyone, and something pokes at the insides of your chest.

_The Survey Corps._

You’d been told stories about humanity’s strongest soldier. Brave, they called him—ready to give his own life in exchange for a better future, brilliant, resourceful. Seeing him now, bruised fingers clutching torn reigns and dirt clinging to the ends of dark hair, Captain Levi Ackerman seems everything but.

All of a sudden you feel sick. The horses stop walking.

A woman emerges from the crowd, stumbling, falling to her feet just a few meters in front of him. There’s a gasp somewhere on your left, a sharp inhale on your right. She doesn’t speak, and none of the others dare to breathe.

No reaction. If the Captain is phased at all, he doesn’t let it on. The muscles in his face are as tight as before, his jaw clenched, a deep crease settled between his brows. After a few seconds he nods, cueing the woman to break her silence.

“M-my son,” she stammers, her voice splintering and rough, almost as if she hadn’t spoken in weeks, “Hans. He—I—“

She is stopped with a mere wave of a hand. Levi turns his head. There’s rustling, someone swinging their legs out of an old saddle. You can hear the whispers, once again, a name passed around in tense foreboding of defeat. No one dares to speak it out loud enough for him to hear.

_“That’s Erwin Smith!”_

Your eyes widen. Without thinking, you lean forward, earning you a grunt and a low swear from the person in front of you as your body brushes up against theirs.

The woman presses her fingers to her chest.

Much like his second-in-command, Erwin’s blond hair sticks to his forehead, doing little to cover up the cuts littering his skin. Splotches of red taint his appearance, some on his nose, some contrasting the heavy, stark green fabric of his hood. Some settled into the fine lines of his blackened knuckles.

It makes your stomach churn when you watch him step closer to the worried mother, still on the ground in front of Levi’s horse. You do not hear his words when he kneels down in front of her and lays one hand on her left shoulder—you know you don’t have to. Nobody has to, and yet the crowd stays rooted into place, hundreds taking faltering breaths in turns, watching when the tears start to fill the woman’s eyes and her hands threaten to crush her own bones underneath their grasp.

The Commander stands, returns to the side of his horse.

You don’t wait for the crying to start. Underneath the afternoon sun you feel like it’s _you_ sprawled out in the road, with your eyes drowning and your heart longing for somebody to return whom you know would not. People moan at you as you force a path out from the masses, shoes corrupting your uneven steps, aching fingers tearing at your hood. _This is fate_ , you think, and begin your trail home.

The few clouds on the horizon draw closer together.

You think of your brother, and wonder whose blood it is on Erwin’s hands.


End file.
